Blizzard at Comic Con New YorkBlizzPlanet has a nice video of the Blizzard panel at the New York Comic Con event. While it mostly covers the new books and lore, we do learn a few things.

Patch 5.1 will bring new Zandalari Troll models, as well as a new model for Vol'jin.

Vol'jin will show up at a few points in Patch 5.1 and Patch 5.2.

It is unlikely we will see Lorewalker objects added to old content, but we might see them added to new content

UDON is going to release a book with the best Fan Art, see the full press release for details.

Vol'jin, Shadows of the Horde will be released in April 2013. Chen Stormstout will be in the novel. Blizzplanet got a nice shot of some of the art.

Patch 5.1 Dalaran Event Audio
There is some audio that goes along with the previously mentioned quests relating to Dalaran's future. Spoilers ahead!

Patch 5.1 Scenario Steps
Keep in mind that it is very likely that all of these scenarios will not make it into Patch 5.1. They may be used for questing in the world rather than a scenario, or might not be intended for Patch 5.1.

The following scenarios have been added to the LFD tool: 5.1 Vol'jin Scenario, Battle on the High Seas (Alliance), A Little Patience, Lion's Landing, Assault on Zan'vess (A), Pursuing the Black Harvest, Domination Point.

Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

Pursuing the Black Harvest

Xi'ri will be making an appearance in the Warlock quest line to give a speech.

Enter the Black Temple - Avoid the guards and enter the Sanctuary of Shadows.

Search for Evidence of the Council's Presence - Find proof that the Council of the Black Harvest came to the temple.

Follow Akama to the Shrine of Lost Souls

Uncover the Council's Plan - Investigate the Reliquary of Souls.

Defeat the Essence of Order - Claim the soul crystal left behind by the Council of the Black Harvest.

Survive the Demonic Invasion - Fight off the demons unleashed by the Reliquary and return to Akama in the Halls of Anguish.

Purge or Plunder - Choose to save Akama's men in the Halls of Anguish or plunder the Den of Mortal delights in the chaos.

Head to the Temple Summit - Take the Empowered Soulcore to the Temple Summit.

5.1 Vol'jin Scenario

Speak with Vol'jin - Speak with Vol'jin to begin the search for the Saurok cave.

Escort Vol'jin to the Saurok Cave - Find the entrance to the Saurok Cave.

Infiltrate the Ancient Fortress - Destroy the orbs of protection and make your way into the fortress.

Stealing for Profit - Grab as much treasure as you can before the titan construct is released.

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Patch 5.1What about the new scenario "Infiltrating the Black Temple" Warlocks get Green fire?
It's not really a scenario.

Just looked over the official PTR Notes. When it says "earn commissions that can be spent to upgrade their faction's base." Is that an individual thing, like the Molten Front, or a server wide thing, like the Sunwell Base building?
Great question! Yes, these changes are all server-wide. Your upgrades help your faction-mates, and are short-term. For example, you could recruit a Mage mercenary to stand in your faction hub and cast Arcane Brilliance on everyone for 1hr.

All of the quests are still PvE. We're trying to make it 'feel' like a war, but still playable on lopsided realms. Very much an experiment.

For clarity, the Brawler's Guild feature announced for 5.1 is unrelated to Proving Grounds. That's still on our Pandaria wishlist. Brawler's Guild akin to solo Amp of Anguish w/ more depth. Proving Grounds likely closer to solo role-based scenarios/challenges.

Do we get more hunter changes for 5.1 instead of this 1 Aimed Shot change or are other classes more important ?
We haven't made any 5.1 class changes yet.

Can we expect quivers for 5.1? Please give us any sign or hope for that
Working on it but not in 5.1.

Will the Battle-Stones be usable on all battle pets (wild and non-wild)?
Yup.

Are the epic quality stones really going live to upgrade pets to epic? If so that is pretty terrible & invalidates the whole system
Epic stones will not be in 5.1.0. We will do them at some point, not now.

Any concern for outdating raid content before players have a chance to finish it on heroic? (regarding 5.1 PTR)
Faster new content doesn't have to mean out dating older content.

ClassesLots of top dps parses from tanks so far, especially dk and pally. Is tank dps or veng too high? Or just DPS undergeared?
Vengeance helps keep tank threat scaling with DPS gear... which DPS don't have yet. We'll keep an eye on it. Why doesn't vengeance increase threat gen % rather than AP then? Current model is devaluing the role of real DPS, geared or not
Having DPS specs is still critical. You just can't write off the tanks' contributions any more.

Starfall ignores CC, your state of combat, yet it's a huge DPS contribution. Why exactly isn't starfall fixed yet?
In general, we like players to have to have to pay attention when using AEs.

Do you guys try to balance AoE between specs or do you like certain classes being stronger for AE situations?
We try to balance it overall, but we're okay with some deltas in length, burst, etc. so that everyone doesn't feel the same.

Can shamans, or elemental have haste buff when flame shock is dispelled like in cata?
We tried to move away from dispel "punishments." UA is one of the few left.

I am a disc priest with close to 13k spirit in a 10 man. I am always oom. pally has 7k spirit and is never oom. Why?
Paladins have a lot of free healing and can subsist on fumes a long time. (That doesn't mean Disc mana is fine.)

ArP was removed for being too mathy. Now it seems like reforging is all math and no gameplay value. Any thoughts?
We agree. The original intent was to solve being over caps, but we don't like the cascade that happens when you get a new piece.

Have you ever considered removing hit from caster gear and going with spirit=hit for all caster classes? Sounds good to me.
We've defended hit as an interesting stat for a long time, but I'm starting to be convinced that it isn't.Is there a specific reason you are starting to think you were wrong? I've never bought into it myself.
Over all, it just feels more like a penalty when you're not hit capped rather than bonus when you are. Reforging, intended to make capping easier, makes getting a new piece of gear less fun because of the cascade effect of hit changes. Incoming rage from all healers about having to share spirit gear w/ mages and warlocks too.
We wouldn't just pull hit and make casters fight. It would be a stat redesign not a quick and dirty patch change. The result will simple be that we'll see spirit items on basically every boss to supply all caster.
No, it probably wouldn't be that simple. We need a few "annoying" stats like exp and hit to break the monotony of mindlessly stacking the 1,2 optimal stats for a class
Gearing needs to be interesting. You shouldn't be able to ignore the stats. That doesn't mean there isn't a better design out there.

Currently tanks are topping meters in raids with the vengeance changes, is this intended, or will we see it balance with gear?
Gear will definitely help. Tank DPS won't go up much more. Rogue DPS will go up a lot. Still, we're keeping an eye on it.

When calculating enh sham dps, do you consider that it's usually impossible for CDs to be used as soon as they're available?
For all specs, we look both at max theoretical damage and more reasonable expectations.

Do you guys keep an eye on glyph usage? Do you think there are any that need to be looked at?
Yes, we look at glyph usage and I'd be surprised if we didn't need to buff some. Waiting for the dust to settle more.

So you mentioned UH Blight and H Blast being bugged - Is Soulreaper 50% haste duration bugged too? Says 10s actually gives 4s Soul Reaper is 5 sec now. Should be in the hotfix notes. The haste was supposed to be consolation, not the reason to SR.

Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Are healing mushrooms where you want them? I found them completely ineffective last night in MV.
We don't want shrooms to be rotational for Resto, but we do want them to get used. May need tweaking.

With the upcoming HOTW hotfix, is there any plan to take a look at the talent to see if it meets the original design brief?
It does a good job of getting a druid to temporarily assume another role. It was just weird for Wrath to be top spell for Feral.

I know simcraft is not perfectly accurate, but can you explain why a pure dps class (hunters) sim below everything else ATM?
Not without verifying that the sims are reasonably accurate for all specs, and I already have a demanding job. Only 1 week of raid parses, mostly for 2 bosses. No extreme outliers yet but we'll see if anyone is behind after another week.

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)My frost mage is now not only ineffectual in damage, but is also a mana sieve. Thanks, Blizz.
That's not what we're hearing about Frost mages overall.

Monk (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Will the fix for the bug where Chi Wave dead-ends when bouncing from enemy to ally be a "hotfix" thing or a "patch" thing?
Not sure yet. We are investigating Chi Wave now. It's complicated.

Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)When we going to see ret pally's buffed? TV hits too low. Bored of being kicked for low DPS even though gear, stats fine?
We think Ret is pretty competitive in raids right now.

Priest (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Healing priests are DIRE in raids, completely ignored our concerns in beta saying it will be fine, devs sold us down the river
Priests got a lot of raiding use this week. Why do you feel ineffective? 10-15% behind all specs in output, requires near perfect play to keep up.
Output isn't a great way to evaluate healing. Overhealing, hot sniping, whoever heals the tanks just having stronger HPS...

Shadow AoE damage is so low, there are some fights I've seen healers do more damage. Is there any intention to fix this?
We want priests to multi-dot a lot in AE situations, not just spam Mind Sear.

Shadow priest single target DPS seems very low. I've been sat on heroic Feng because of this. Anything to help would be great.
Shadow single target DPS is fine. AE might be low.

Rogue (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)Some good Rogue forum discussion going on about feeling energy starved and more. How do you feel about Rogues right now?
It doesn't surprise me you feel energy starved if you went from Dragon Soul epics to MoP blues. More haste will change things.

The issues rogues are complaining about are the same ones you said you would address prior to the release of cataclysm.
Rogues are fine in PvE. We're looking at movement in PvP.

Many said the Rogue DPS is too low and the energyreg seems very very slow. Are you going to change something?
Rogue DPS in PvE is fine. Keeping a close eye on them in PvP though. Tell me, how are rogues in PvE fine? We are getting outdone by friggin DK and Monks in tanking specc.
In what situation? Feng? He buffs tanks. Dungeons? Tanks historically win there, but it's uptime not DPS.

Curse Weekly Roundup
This week PETA makes a game parody on Pokemon, dinosaur fans get to finally be one in Primal Carnage, a Maine State Senate candidate gets heat for playing WoW, Hawken makes it's way to the New York Comic Con, Playspan users get hacked, and your game forecast for next week.